Evermore
by dragonkeeper19600
Summary: I lived during a time when the world was going to end. In love, I had odd luck. I was on the threshold of the last dregs of humanity. But in the end, I was able to hold onto her, my daughter, my star, my Marceline. My name is Eva, and I'm complicated.
1. Pure

_**Evermore**_

**1. Pure**

Betty ran through the night.

It was winter, and it was cold, even though the snow did not fall anymore, so she was bundled up. Her shoes thumped against the cold pavement, the moon cast shadows on her whispery breath. She was out of breath, she panted, but still she did not stop, for there was a need, pressing and omnipresent, that needed to be met. She ran through the night. Many windows were lit; the city did not sleep. But she saw hardly a car on the streets, and those that were there, sped at breakneck pace. She knew people were gathered around their television sets. She also knew there would be no point in trying to overhear. Of course everybody would have it turned to the same channel.

Finally, she skidded to a halt in front of the dimly lit porch of the dingy building in front of her. Quickly, she pounded on the door. She listened anxiously for the footsteps softly falling inside.

I opened the door.

"Betty!" I said, "You're here!"

"I came as soon as I could," she said, stepping in. "Have you heard?"

"Yeah," I said. "Everyone's heard. The bomb fell."

The bomb fell. It was an event that had been talked about for months, for years, maybe even for decades, if you really speculated. We had been assured by a slew of politicians and nobles that it would never happen, couldn't happen. Now, our military had finally dropped a nuclear bomb on a distant country. We were officially at war.

The bomb fell. It sounded so final.

"Where's Marceline?" Betty asked, as she handed me her coat.

"She's in bed," I said. "I sent her up hours ago."

She nods, like that makes perfect sense. "Did you really run all the way here?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. She's still breathing hard.

"Look at you," I said, "You looked exhausted. You need a drink." I turned my head over my shoulder. _"Jeff!"_ I yelled, _"Betty's here! Get her a drink!"_

In the kitchen, I heard my landlord, Jeff, scrambling for the drinks.

"Are they still talking about it?" she asked as she stepped in. It's a stupid question; she knew that. She could see the TV blaring behind the couch just beyond the door.

"Yes," I said, "Of course. They'll be talking about it for a while. Maybe the rest of our lives."

"Don't talk like that yet," she said.

Jeff came in with the drinks. We gripped them and gathered around the TV, ignoring the couch. None of us much felt like sitting.

"_Today, just minutes ago, at 10:21 pm, the South Asian Directorate officially declared war on the Kingdom of Ooo. The allies of both countries are soon expected to follow suit. The death toll from the first bomb is already in the hundreds of thousands, and is continuing to climb. Officials report that the estimated casualties and worldwide cost will be…"_

"This can't seriously be happening," Jeff was saying.

"Of course it can," I said grimly. "They've been planning it for years."

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Eva," said Betty.

"It's how I'm talking. God knows I don't have much time left to talk like this. They've _failed_ us, you guys, and you know it."

"Do you really think they could destroy the whole world?" Jeff said hesitantly.

"They've been able to since the twentieth century," I said. "The only reason they haven't yet is that they were being nice."

"I don't even get it!" Jeff kept protesting, as if protesting could somehow change the facts, change the world. "Why are we even at war, anyway?"

"Food," I said.

"What?"

"Food," I said. "The people overseas, they don't have enough. We do."

"Is that why they hate us?" he asked.

"_We_ bombed _them,"_ I reminded him.

All of us were silent, thinking of our pasts, our pains and struggles, and what they had led to. Our hopes and dreams. Our futures. Marceline. I felt my eyes begin to sting. Angrily, I turned my head away. Marceline, my star. I'm sorry we failed you.

"It's over," I said. "We're done for."

"It _can't_ be!" Jeff shrieked, looking imploringly at me. Nothing really bad had ever happened to him, no big catastrophes, and he couldn't believe it now. "It can't be the end of the world! They'll figure something out or…" He turned away from me. "Betty!" he implored, "Betty, tell her! She…"

But Betty just looked away, her eyes dark. She had learned, long ago, how the world can suddenly collapse on you.

"We'll fight, Jeff," I said. "We'll live as long as we can. But we'll also be realistic."

But, I guess that didn't help. The end of the entire world felt like nothing that could ever be real.

And so here we stood, gathered around the TV, on the eventide of humanity, waiting for our fates.

* * *

My name is Eva, and I am unimportant.

In the global scale, on a cosmic scale, I am unimportant. I am a speck, a tiny collection of inarticulate matter, the tiniest, a product of chance and cosmic dust, so small as to be inconsequential. On a big, universal, mind-boggling scale, I do not matter in the slightest and neither does anybody else.

Everybody, I think, growing up, has that moment where they learn they don't matter. They realize that the world, as it is, doesn't need them, that society isn't going to do you any special favors because you are just like millions of others and because of that you are unimportant. Everyone has that moment.

Everyone except me. I always knew that. I didn't have to learn that lesson. If I did have a moment like that, it must have happened years and years ago, when I was very young. I grew up knowing that I didn't matter. I was always angry. I was a very messed up kid.

In many ways, I still am. I'm messed up and an idiot, but the world was messed up and idiotic, so I think I did the best I could, considering the circumstances. I lot of things happen, a lot of things that resonate, so now, I can see things clearly, though not in order and always not with a point in mind. But clearly.

Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. It wasn't an unhappy life. For the most part. It also wasn't a happy life, but I'm not even sure what that means. It was a life is all, and I was happy for some parts of it and sad for some parts of it, but even though in many ways, it's unremarkable, I still have words to say and wisdom I want to give, even if for the life of me I can't tell what that wisdom is.

So, here, as I am, is me. Take it or leave it.

I am important to precisely three people.

Well, maybe that's not true. I guess I could have influenced people in other ways, by passing them in the street or sending them a birthday card or taking the last can of beans from the shelf. We all have a cloud of people that our presence touches. But, for the clearest, absolutest answer, down to the people about whom I was absolutely sure, it would definitely be these three.

The first is Betty, my good friend. Though she may be two, since there were two Betties I knew, both occupying the same body but different Betties nonetheless. Complicated, like I said. But whatever she was, she was good and kind and a hard fighter. She was the last human being I ever saw.

The second is Marceline, my daughter. My treasure, my star. I'm sorry I hurt you, love. I hope you think of me as a good mother anyway. I won't ask you to love me because I know there's no need. Nothing can ever change that.

The third is the man I fell in love with, though he wasn't a man, not really. What he was is hard to pin down. I'm still scratching my head at a lot of it. I sometimes wonder if falling in love with him was a mistake. Well, it wasn't a mistake. It wasn't the "right choice" either. It was just a thing I did.

I never forgave him, though honestly I think the only reason is that I didn't have time. That's the most frustrating thing, I think. Given the time, I probably would have forgiven him, and that really bothers me because I'm not sure I should. But I probably would. So it goes.

Did he love me? Um, I think so, but with him, it was hard to tell.

Complicated.

Little things about him. The grip on his hand when he pulled me into the Nightosphere, the gleam on his fangs whenever he talked about the coming war, a thrilled, hungry gleam, how, once, when he probably thought I wasn't looking, I saw him flip a coin into the box of a beggar girl while she was sleeping. And then, when I was pregnant with Marceline, how excited he was, how he actually grabbed my hands and danced around the room, and then, after she was born, the way he held her, so gently, up close, how he made soft, little cooing noises and gazed into her face like he wanted her to swallow him up.

No, he wasn't "the right choice." But little moments like that made it easy to be tied to him. So it goes.

* * *

I think I'll always remember how I met him:

I was seventeen. Back then, I was a wreck. I was wild, a delinquent, a mess. I lived on the street. I was angry and a little crazy. It's actually kind of embarrassing to think about, now. But it wasn't my fault I was like that or, at least, not _exclusively_ my fault. The world was a mess back then.

Like, I said, my name is Eva. No last name, just Eva. I grew up alone. There was no mother; there was no father. Well, I mean, obviously there had to have been at some point, but I couldn't remember either of them, so there wasn't. Most of my childhood, I remember, was being passed from foster home to foster home. At first, all of them were bad, bad places to be, for reasons I can't remember now, and when I got to the nice places later on, it was too late. The damage had been done.

No school either. I had dropped out years ago. No one raised a fuss; a lot of people dropped out in those days.

I lived in the street, like I said. I disliked being outside, but I hated being indoors even more. All the clean floors and fluorescent lights and shiny surfaces made me feel filthy, like an urchin. I slept in the alleyways, in between buildings. I carried a knife with me, which I used to fend people off until someone inevitably swiped it and I had to find another one again. I was never in a gang, exactly, but there were other kids and adults out there that I ran into and recognized. We met up, laughed at things that weren't funny, told jokes about things that made us want to cry, and betrayed each at the slightest chance. You were on your own. I got into a few fights. Some I one, others not so much.

Honestly, all of it kind of runs together, and the parts that I can remember are humiliating to think about. What I remember most of all was the dirt. I was always dirty, my clothes fished out of the dumpster and either too big or too small, and there was grime in everything, in my skin, in my hair, embedded in my cap like lice, smudged on my cheek. I was always covered in some sort of grungy black something. I remember I itched a lot.

I had no job, of course. Who would hire me? So, I turned into a thief. I never went after jewelry or watches or gold or anything like that, even though there was a lot of it winking on people's wrists and such and I probably could have. What really interested me was food. I'd swipe stuff from carts or convenience stores. I'd stroll into a grocery store, trying to look in-place and being certain I was failing, and grab fruit, peeling the labels off. I also tried to grab cigarettes when I could, but that was more difficult.

Another important thing was medical supplies. Bandaids, ointment, cough drops especially, I'd grab those. We got sick a lot and ended up bleeding more often than not. No doctors, of course; we didn't have the money, so if you weren't well, nobody was going to take care of you. Other people would slow you down.

Sometimes we'd run heists together, though calling them heists makes them sound way cooler than they actually were. It basically means we'd run around in a group, hollering or laughing like lunatics, taking stuff from people, easy because they were scared of us. Other times, we tried to be more subtle. One favorite of theirs was a classic: the bump and swipe. One of us would walk down the street and bump into somebody, usually somebody we'd tagged earlier in the day. We'd walk right into them and try to make it seem like it was their fault, or, at least, an innocent mistake, no malice intended. The person who walked into them would fall on the ground, and they would be all apologies. "Oh my gosh, I didn't see you there! I'm so sorry!" While the other person helped one of us up, somebody else would sneak up behind them and take their wallet. We all laughed wildly at this method and it filled us with a kind of thrill, but I wasn't actually interested in the booty afterwards. A wallet was only valuable if you intended to walk into a store later and buy something, and I was too ashamed for that.

* * *

Here's a memory that sticks out: It was during the day, and I saw a hotdog stand. I looked up and as soon as I saw it, I could smell it, the greasy meat cooking, spinning on those little metal rollers. I felt my mouth watering.

I quickly took in the scenario. It was a pretty big stand, and it was crowded. There was a pretty sizeable line, a lot of kids, I remember. I think it must have been some sort of holiday. Or maybe a parade. Was it Coronation Day? I don't remember. Regardless, it was busy. It was so busy, in fact, that the hotdogs were mostly premade, laid all around the counter of the stand, so that when somebody walked up, the seller could just pick them up and hand them to somebody, no hassle. The vendor, I remember, was this old guy in glasses, all done up in the hat and striped apron, and he smiled down at the kids and then handed the hotdogs to their parents.

I took all of this in, trying to observe without obviously staring. There were a lot of people around, but the old guy looked pretty busy, and his back was turned to a few of the hotdogs. And they smelled so good. I figured if I was real quick about it, I could nab one with no one noticing. I walked up to the back of the stand, real slow, real casual, eyes down like I had done hundreds of other times. Just reach out, grab a hotdog, keep walking. Easy at it would ever be.

I severely underestimated the old guy selling them.

I reached out to grab a hotdog, and the old guy whirls around and whacks my hand with a spatula. I didn't even see the guy grab the spatula; he was just so fast. I swore and grabbed my hand, and with that people noticed. I looked up and saw eyes watching me, the parents and the kids, the parents disdainful or maybe amused, the kids troubled or scared or maybe a little thrilled, but what horrified me most was just the simple shining fact of those eyes, staring at me, taking me in. I felt my cheeks burn. The old guy was staring at me, too, and his eyes were just hollowed with disgust. They were like pits, like a black hole.

I probably should have run. Every instinct in my body was telling me to flee. But, I guess my pride or something got in the way, and I couldn't. The burning in my cheeks spread to somewhere in my back, I guess, and I felt a lump in my throat, and I got that feeling I always got, like the whole world was a horrible plague that I wished I could scrub with acid down a drain. I guess it was that raw, powerless anger that kept me from running away, like I should have.

Instead, stupidly, I tried to grab the hotdog again and bolt. I wrapped my fingers around it, could feel the soft heat of the bun in my hand, but the old guy reached out and slapped his hand on my elbow, grabbing me and yanking me back. I tried to twist out of his grip, screaming as I did, but he wrenched the rumpled hotdog out of my hand and threw it to the ground. Then he shoved me back, hard, and I collided with the sidewalk. I glared up at him, full of hate and venom. I wanted to tear this guy's throat out and eat his heart, but of course I lacked the power to do anything of the sort, so I just sat there, feeling it bubbling in my head.

He was looking down at me still, that hollow, garbage look, and I'll always remember what he said.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he told me. "You filthy hooligan!" he gestured behind himself, to the people in line, staring, "What makes you think you deserve anything more than these people here? Don't you know there are good, hardworking people in this country who earn what they eat?"

I just looked down at the concrete, really quietly. Off far away, I could hear band music, trumpets and drums and confetti sounds. I said, real softly: "Where?"

I didn't see the old guy's face, but I could tell he probably thought I had some cheek. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Where are they?" I asked. "The good, hardworking people. Where are they?"

"Well…" He seemed taken aback. "Well, they're… er…um…"

I kept talking. "Where? Where are they hiding? Show me. Show me where they're hiding."

I looked up at him. I couldn't really see straight anymore, and I couldn't make myself stop talking. "Where are they? Where are the good, hardworking people? Where are they? Tell me where they are. C'mon, tell me."

The old guy seemed beyond words at this point. He didn't even seem angry anymore. He was just kind of staring at me.

"Tell me!" I kept saying. "Please, tell me! Where are they? Tell me, for God's sake!" There were tears streaking down my face. "For the love of God where are they? Please show me somebody, anybody!" Without really thinking about what I was doing, I reached forward and grabbed the guy's apron, tugging down on it. He didn't push me away. I looked right up into his face, my face covered in tears, begging. He looked horrified.

"Show me! Please, show me!" I kept sobbing. "Please, just one! Just one decent person! Where are they? _Where are they?"_

Eventually, somebody got scared and called the police. I spent the night in jail. I never did get that damn hotdog.

* * *

That was the way the world was, then. It wasn't just me that was angry. The truth was the whole world was messed up. Not everybody was like me. I had some concrete things to be angry about; I was hungry and alone. But, the way I heard it, even if you were wealthy and surrounded by people, these days you were still angry about something. Not at anyone or anything, there was just a deep dissatisfaction that ran through your life. Crime was everywhere. It seemed everyone either had too much or too little. It was crowded everywhere. Oftentimes I'd curl up in a spot for the night between two dumpsters only to find as many as three people already there.

On top of that, there was a lot of conflict going on overseas. I didn't really understand it; I don't think anybody did, but we were always hearing on the news about such-and-such attack or such-and-such bombing or such-and-such assassination. People got afraid to travel. The seas were polluted, and for the most part, empty. There were a lot of bugs, too, I remember, you were usually swatting at them. All the irritations, the small and the huge, pilled on each other and poisoned all of us like miasma. There were just too many people and not enough to go around.

So, it's true what I say, that the way I turned out wasn't my fault. Except no, that's not true, it was my fault after all. Both of those statements are true.

So when I say what happened that day wasn't my fault, I'd be lying. But, if I were to say that it absolutely was, that would be a lie, too.

Like I said, I was seventeen. It was in the afternoon. We were gathered around an apartment, and on one of the big upper floors, there was a party. It hadn't gotten crazy yet, after all the sun was still up, but one of the windows was open, and we could hear the music and the voices from the sidewalk, the laughter and the driving beat of the dance music. And, as usual for a party, there were a lot of cars parked around, all tightly packed together like mud.

We mingled around, laughing about sad things, and, of course, we took up residence on top of the cars. Just kind of sitting on them, perching on them, like birds. A few of the guys started scratching things on the doors. We were making fun of the rich people upstairs with their apartment and their party and their cars and fancy clothes, hiding our envy rather poorly. We took our petty vengeance on their cars, scratching and denting them where we could.

After we got bored of that, we started looking through the windows, peering at the interiors, and dude, there was some valuable stuff in there! Phones, purses, shoes, jackets, I mean, a real mother load. We even saw a laptop. One of the cars had a puppy inside, no joke, a live puppy. It barked furiously when we pressed our faces against the glass, but luckily the people upstairs dismissed it. We couldn't believe the kind of loot these dumb socialites would just leave lying around for all to see.

So here there were, staring at all this stuff, and one of the guys, I think his name was Chaz or something, said, "Dude, let's crack one open and grab something."

That's just the way he said it. "Crack one open," like the car was a nut, and we were picking out the sweet, sweet meat inside.

I laughed, which is the way I reacted to things that made me unhappy. "Don't be stupid," I said. "They'll hear it!"

He rolled his eyes and grinned, showing off all his teeth. Bravado. "Don't worry! We'll grab it real quick and then split. No one will be the wiser."

Everyone was immediately on board, and I must admit I was, too. We tried all the doors to every car, but they were all locked. So it was decided we would have to break a window.

Since we decided to be quick about it, we decided we'd only have one shot. There was some debate, then, about what to grab. We looked around at the cars again, perusing the stock. Someone actually suggested taking the puppy, but thankfully someone else shot it down on the grounds that it might bite and the glass might hurt it anyway. Besides, who would feed it? The laptop was considered, but for something like that, someone would have to pawn it, and the fact was none of us trusted each other to give us an even split of the money.

Finally, we decided on a big, pink, leathery purse, on the grounds that it was huge, and whatever cash was inside could be divvied up more clearly. Besides, the pink gaudy, femininity of the bag filled us with the sense that the owner had to be punished.

I told you we were stupid.

The next question was how to break the window. One guy tried to use his elbow, and that ended up disastrous. Someone else had a pocketknife and tried to get in that way, but the glass was too thick and the knife barely scratched it. One girl suggested ramming a foot through the window, but nobody wanted to try that.

Finally, somebody went through a nearby dumpster and found a power drill, thrown away because of a frayed cord. We decided the drill would be sufficient to break the window, so Chaz took it, held the tip against the curve of the glass, and then reared back and jammed it through.

The glass shattered with a sound somewhere between lighting and bells, but the opening was far too small, just a small hole with the cracks spidering around it. But as soon as Chaz broke through, the car alarm went off. All the lights on the car began flashing as the loud wailing siren rose into the air.

"Aw, what?" said Chaz, his arms still up. We cringed slightly, covering our ears at the noise. In the upper floor, the music suddenly stopped.

"We need to go! Now!" somebody shouted.

"No, give me a minute! I can get through!" Chaz yelled back.

At that moment, the glass on the sunroof suddenly exploded. Shards and white dust littered the roof of the car. Open-mouthed, we stared and looked up at the window. We saw the silhouette of a man, his arm out in front of him.

"He's got a gun!?" I shouted.

For a second, nobody moved. We were all frozen. A second shot, busting the headlight on another car, broke the spell. We bolted, all of us in a different direction. The power drill clattered to the ground as Chaz turned heel. I panicked and took off in the opposite direction of the apartment, towards the next street over. I could still hear more shots ringing out. In my confused state, I remember thinking, _Dear God, I hope they don't hit the puppy. _

I ran away from the car, away from the gun. I couldn't make my legs stop running, now did I want to. And it isn't one of life's little ironies? I escaped the gun. None of the bullets left a scratch on me.

But I didn't see the car coming.

The last thing I remember is a crack of glass and a woman screaming as my head hit the windshield.

Here's some stuff that must have happened:

I must've been unconscious, my body draped across the hood of the car. Somebody must've called an ambulance, and the ambulance must have taken me away. They must've wrapped up my head, fussed over me, real professional like, tearing away my cap because it was dirty and in the way. They must have rushed me through the hallways in one of those cots, the breathing mask over my mouth and nose, as they wheeled me down into the room with the machines that glowed and bags that dripped. They must have hooked me up to a lot of machines, brain scanner, heart monitor, and kept an eye on me.

And at one point, they must have noticed that my heartbeat was erratic.

Shock they'd say. She might have gone into shock. Then they must've taken the defibrillator and zapped me, trying to get me back, shock for the shock. And they'd work hard and fast because my life was on the line, and by God, there was too much death in the world for them to lose another one.

But I was unconscious for all of that, so this is all pure speculation. It must have happened, though I didn't see any of it.

Here is what I did see:

* * *

The first thing I noticed was the smell. It smelled like… like rotten eggs. Rotten eggs and smoke. The air felt thick somehow, like a perpetual eggy fog. The next thing I noticed was the feel. I was sitting down, one knee propped up, one hand on the ground, the other in my lap, and I felt the gravel and the fine sand rolling against my skin, the jagged hardness of the rock I was leaning against. I slowly blinked and blearily looked up.

And the first thing I saw was flames.

There were flames everywhere, and the heat was intense; I felt like I was baking underneath my cap, my jacket. I wasn't burning; I seemed to be on some kind of cliff, looking over the fiery plains, and everywhere I looked I saw hard, red light as the flames curled and danced into the dark red sky.

I crawled on my hands and knees to the edge and looked out across the burning landscape. That was a mistake. Everywhere, I saw things moving. Living things, I thought. I was half-right. Even now, I'm having a hard time describing them. They came in every shape imaginable and some unimaginable. The crawled and limped and flew through the curled air. I saw horns and bat wings and glowing, yellow eyes. They slithered and flapped in ways that were disturbing to my stinging eyes. And there were so many of them, an endless throng of lizard skin and spider walks.

I felt bile raise up in my throat. I fell backward, crawling back towards the rock I had been lying against. "Oh no," I whimpered. "Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh _God,_ no…"

I knew I screwed up. I knew that, oh I knew that. But had I really screwed up that badly? Every fear, cold and clenching, burrowed up from my stomach. I clenched both sides of my cap and shook my head. "Oh God, oh God, no no no no no…"

One of the creatures that was flying by, a fellow with six eyes and a sideways jaw, spotted me and flew down to where I was, landing with a soft crunch. "A human?" I heard him say, "Oh Glob, not another one." Another creature flew by, and he pointed up at him. "Yo!" he said, "Get the boss! Tell him we got another one!"

The other one nodded and flew off. The first parked right where he was and just stood near me, sort of absently looking out over the distance.

"Hey," I said weakly, "H-hey… Listen. This is a mistake. I shouldn't be here."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he said briskly, "Sure, we got it, a mistake. Don't worry, we'll take care of it."

I guess that was supposed to be reassuring, but there was something rather sinister in his tone that was distressing to me.

We waited, me shivering with terror, even in the heat.

We didn't have to wait long.

The other guy flew back before He showed up. The demon, because of course that's what he was, a demon, flew up just over the edge of the cliff face, a little above where my head would be if I were standing, and just floated there in place, his wings flapping. I didn't look around for the one they were looking for; I only sat there, staring straight ahead, as he appeared.

On the rim of the cliff, two long, black tendrils lashed out, one after the other, and curled around the rocky edge, hoisting up its mass. More tendrils followed, crawling and oozing over one another, making sick, whispering, bubbling as they did. The whole black and purple mass curled up over the edge, sending out a new tendril to squeeze onto the ground each time it moved forward. I was reminded, bizarrely, of mold, the way it spreads and clings, thriving in decay.

Quickly, the mass piled up on itself, growing taller and taller, until it assembled itself and a canvas of gray skin stretched itself over it and there he was.

I stared, gaping. I didn't know what to think. In some ways, it was less strange than what I was expecting, but in other ways, that only served to make it more… uncanny, I guess is the word. The long white fangs, the gray skin and sunken-in cheeks, the long bat-like ears, the trim haircut, the suit. It didn't match. But what stuck out the most to me where the eyes. They were huge; they took up almost half his face. They were yellow and seemed to glow, with pupils that were red and slitted like a cat's.

He was looking down at me with a sort of mild disinterest.

"This the one?" he asked, looking at his nails. His voice was also normal, also out of place. It was clearly and obviously a man's voice.

"Yes, Your Lowness," the flying one said, before I could say anything, "We think she showed up just a second ago."

He kept looking at me, rubbing his chin. "Yup," he said, "Definitely human." He moved in an odd way; his torso kind of swiveled around in a circle, almost like it was in a ball hinge, before it swung him down toward me. He was less than a foot from my face. He grinned.

"Hello," he said.

I turned my eyes away. I didn't know what to say.

"Tch, not even a scream?" he asked. "Oh well. Might as well get started. Say, 'aah…'"

And he started to open his mouth.

In that moment, something in me snapped. I have no idea what caused it. It was like a spring or something had been winding inside me, tighter and tighter, and then suddenly, with this thing in my face and flames all around me, it finally sprung back. Maybe it was a bout of insanity or adrenaline. Maybe all the hurt I'd been building my entire life was sharpening itself, demanding to be heard.

All I know for sure is the only thought in my mind was, _Not like this._

There was a stalagmite near me, a skinny thing, but solid enough. Without really knowing what I was doing, I reached over, grabbed it, and yanked. It broke off in my hand surprisingly easily. Not letting myself think I swung it in front of me so hard I felt I almost yanked my own arm out of my socket.

He flew back faster than I thought possible. "Whoa!" I heard him shout. The other two demons seemed astounded. I didn't let myself be surprised, though. I knew that if I did, I'd freeze up and then I'd be lost. I twirled the stalagmite in the air beside my head like a bat. "Get back!" I snarled.

He flinched, and his arm swung in front of his face like a marionette's. "Sheesh, put that down," he said, "There's no need to be so violent."

I swung it again and whacked him hard across the face. I saw the scuff mark from the sand on his cheek. For a moment, he looked shocked. He blinked and then he snarled, literally snarled, and his eyes slid over to me and narrowed into slits.

"I mean it!" I shouted. "You stay away from me!" _Not like this. Not like this. _

He was unimpressed. "So that's how you want it? Fine." He let out an animal hissing noise and swiped at me. I leapt sideways out of the way, keeping the stalagmite pointed toward him. I swung it up towards him again, but his left arm shot out at a weird angle and blocked it. He grinned, and I saw the other arm swinging around for me. I ducked, swinging in under his outstretched arm. I don't think he was expecting me to do that. I swung up my stalagmite one more time and managed to uppercut him on the jaw. He flew back from me, hissing and rubbing his chin, looking more annoyed than anything else. He looked down at me, and I looked up at him.

Our eyes met.

I must admit, though I am a little ashamed now, at the time, all I saw was a monster. Well, no, not a monster. Nothing as concrete as that. But something bizarre, something dangerous, something alien.

But that's not what he saw.

All the anger faded from his face. He looked dumbstruck. He kept staring. I didn't notice at the time, save for a tiny point in the back of my brain.

What did he see?

I didn't know, at the time. He told me later. What he'd seen, he told me, was divine light. Exquisiteness. Beauty in its purest form.

What he had seen was my pain. My anger, my hurt. My hatred, my deep burning hatred for all things, for myself, for the people I spoke to that I would never call my friends, for the children and parents, for the bugs and the heat and the people who swam in them, for the countries far away and all their soldier's deaths, for the children and the parents and the empty seas, for the poor who laughed at pain and the rich who ignored it, for the others and their cars and their guns and their striped aprons, for the entire planet, the entire broken world, for him. A hatred and pain that could account for ten billion souls. A rage against the heavens. In there, as well, he saw a fierce will to live. Not hope, no, nothing like that, something fiercer and darker. The drive to hurt as many living things as possible, to spite and lash out at the world, punish it as much as possible before the end. He saw a hatred that could devour cities, worlds, that could scrub them with acid and drown them in seas. It was a hatred powerful enough to crumble millions of galaxies to dust, a poisoned, despairing heart that could drown reality in an eternal black hole.

_Beauty,_ he'd said.

He kept staring at me. "I warned you," I spat. "Don't you dare touch me. If you do, I swear, I will _split your head in half!"_

He blinked at me, then growled, real low and dangerous. His arm shot out and gripped the stalagmite, and when I tried to wrench it out of his hand it broke in half.

My hands shook, and I took a step back, staring up at him. He grinned, a weird, pumpkin grin, and threw away the half that had broken off in his hand. I looked down at my broken fragment and spun it around, so that the pointed tip was facing outward. He laughed as he stepped closer to me.

Suddenly, I felt a strange pulsing inside of me, a sort of lightening, that moved out in ringlets. I dropped my broken stalagmite to the ground and looked down at my hands. They were fading into air and back, winking in and out of existence. I looked down at the rest of my body. It was all the same; I was fading.

Apparently, nobody quite knew what to make of this. The two demons, who had been watching, stared openly. "What the…?" one said. I knew I probably should have panicked, and yet I felt oddly calm.

I looked up at him, and his eyes grew wider and he watched me disappear. His expression had quickly melted from triumph to blank surprise to anger. I flickered faster and faster. My vision was starting to darken.

"_No!"_ he snarled, and he lunged for me, but it was too late, and his fist closed on empty air as I faded out of existence.

* * *

I can imagine now, the doctors in that hospital, putting the defibrillator away and pointing at the screen, at my now even heartbeat. They would be sighing with relief, congratulating each other. Perhaps they would even high-five. "Great work! We brought her back from the brink! Excellent job!" They'd say, and afterwards many of them would leave, only leaving one to watch me as I truly slept, calm, my breathing even. Some variant of this must have happened. And I slept through the night and for several days afterward, dreaming absently, much more vaguely than before, of the monster in the place of flames, who filled me with fear, yes, but also with a wonder I'd never known before, and whose final act had been to reach for me, clutching the empty air as I'd vanished.

_Beautiful,_ he'd say.

* * *

**AN:**

_Hrm... Here it is. Yes, another story. I know, I'm bad at that. But I'm really interested in this one right now, so I want to focus on it for a while._

_While creating Eva, one of the things I wondered about was "What kind of woman would Hunson Abadeer fall in love with? The result is what you got. And while I was brainstorming this chapter, I sort of noticed something._

_Hunson Abadeer is hella sexy._

_There is much to say, but even more to read, so I will simply bow and leave you to it. Please enjoy "Evermore."_


	2. You

**2. You**

Marceline had problems with bullying.

In a way, I had seen it coming. It was the way she looked. Her gray skin, her long ears, her gleaming, pointed teeth. And then there's the fact that she was beautiful. I understand I'm biased, but it was the truth. She was beautiful. So they were cruel because of that. And then they found out about me: The nameless orphan, the fatherless mother, the diseased street rat, and they tormented her for that, too.

I had seen it coming, but the first time she came home crying, I was totally unprepared. It was a group of boys. She ran into my arms and sobbed into my stomach and told me how they'd tripped her in the halls and laughed raucously when she stumbled, how they'd walked behind her, tugging on the zipper of her backpack. They called her a goblin, because of the way she looked. They did this thing where they held their fingers up to the sides of their heads and waggled them at her, for the ears. _Goblin._

As she poured all this out to me, I felt a deep, primal rage spiking up within me. How dare they. How dare they make fun of my little girl, my beautiful daughter. Rats, vermin, all of them. I wanted to kill them, I legitimately wanted to kill them for hurting my little girl.

Instead, I told her the truth, that she was beautiful, that I loved her so much, that there will always be nasty people who hurt others and you must learn to disdain them, to see their words as the filth and garbage that they are. They have less value than you, I said, because they say those things.

Marceline tried; she really did. I could see her trying. She tried to act haughty, practicing a look of mild amusement whenever they said something biting to her. I saw her rehearsing in the mirror, raising an eyebrow, looking the part of being more valuable, like I'd said.

But it kept getting worse. Their insults got harsher, their jokes more aggressive. Her things began disappearing; one day, she came home starving because the boys had dumped milk on all her food. It was at this point that they learned about me. They called me _things,_ right to her face, and when she, her eyes a mixture of both sorrow and confusion, uncomprehendingly repeated them to me later, I was shocked.

One day, she came home with a scraped knee. The boys had pushed her down, she said, and she had scraped her knee on the curb.

At that point, I gave up. "The next time they do something like that," I said, "Just push them back."

Next day, Marceline came home looking pretty pleased with herself. I tussled her hair and gave her some milk and a sandwich.

Later that afternoon, I got a phone call. It was from the boy's mother. Her son, from what I had gathered, was the ringleader of sorts. My son, she told me, said that your daughter pushed him down in the playground. Is this true?

"Yeah, it's true," I said.

The woman was hysterical. "Well?" she demanded, "What are you going to do about it?"

"Not a thing," I said, "After all, _I'm_ the one who told her to do it." My heart was hammering. Here I was, on the phone with the enemy.

I could tell that the woman hated me, but I didn't care. The feeling was mutual. "Why on earth would you encourage violence in your child?" she shrieked.

"It was defense," I said. "Self-defense. He pushed _her _down yesterday. Did he tell you that?"

"Are you seriously accusing my-?"

"I'm not finished," I cut her off. "Did he tell you that he's been tormenting her for a long time? Did you know that he calls her names, that he and his friends take her stuff, open her backpack when she's not looking? Did he tell you that he calls her a 'goblin?' Did you know they once tried to get her to eat a live spider, and they probably would have done it too if the teacher hadn't walked by? Did he tell you how Marceline has tried to feign sick, that she doesn't want to go to school because of what your kid puts her through everyday? Did he tell you any of that?"

The woman was spluttering. Somehow, she was still mad at _me._ "Look you-!" she started. "What gives you the right to accuse my son like this?"

I didn't like the way she'd emphasized the word "you." I thought of the _things,_ the names Marceline had repeated back to me in a bewildered voice. How I wasn't married. How I looked, and how I dressed to emphasize it. How I had been homeless, parentless. My skin color. Children didn't know words like that. Children would have no way of teaching each other words like that. Only adults say such things. My fist tightened.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," I said. "Look at what the kid you were supposed to raise is turning into. You ought to be ashamed!" Then I hung up on her. She didn't call back.

Marceline didn't have as much of a problem after that. She was much more cheerful. She still didn't like school, but she didn't try to fake being sick anymore. She never came home hungry.

"Too bad Daddy wasn't here," she said to me once. "If he ever found out, he'd kill them!"

I laughed. Maybe a little too loudly. "No, he probably wouldn't do that!" I said. I paused. "All the same, we better not tell him."

* * *

My head was still pounding when I woke up in the hospital. The glare of the lights and the white of the linoleum felt like knives in my eyes. Blindness isn't black; it's white. I squinted and rubbed at the sting.

There was a nurse in the room, writing something on a clipboard, and when she saw me sitting up, groaning about the light, she darted right to me. Was I alright? Was I thirsty? Here, have a glass of water. How did I feel? Could I understand her? Here, she needed me to look into this light.

She left. I was relieved. I shook my head and curled my fingers into my hair. My hair felt oddly clean, the strands soft yet sticky with my sweat. Touching my head, though, was a bad idea; I winced. I felt a bandage there, wrapped over my hair.

I looked around groggily, trying to get my bearings. The room was oppressively clean. Most of the surfaces were white, except for the walls, which were a heavy, iron blue. I felt like I knew what it was like to be inside a bug zapper. I was wearing one of those hospital gowns. There was a paper band around my wrist.

Something about this room… seemed off, I remember. Like, it was unreal. I could just barely remember why. I thought about the strange fog of dreams that I had faded into, in and out. The flames and the dark and those eyes. I shivered.

The white, speckled curtain was brushed aside, and the doctor walked in. "Ah, good!" she said, "I came over as soon as I heard you were up. How are you feeling?"

I squinted at her, blinking slowly. "Where am I?" I asked, stupidly.

She chuckled. "You're in the hospital. I understand if you're confused. That was a real close call you had."

Then I remembered. The car. I felt my skeleton grow cold. "Was I… dying?" I asked.

She looked troubled, and she shifted her glasses uncomfortably. "Well, you're safe now," she said. "Luckily, someone called an ambulance and brought you in right away. If we had waited, it could've been very serious. But, you should be out of danger now."

"Oh," I said, because what else do you say to something like that?

Then I said: "Where are my clothes?"

"Right over here," she said. She pointed to the table, where I could see the things I was wearing, the coat, the sweater, the jeans, neatly folded underneath clear plastic. "We had them cleaned up for you," she said, "We had to throw out your hat, unfortunately. It couldn't be cleaned."

From the blood, she meant.

"You had a mild concussion," she was telling me, "No serious brain damage that we could detect. Are you having any trouble speaking? Any gaps in memory as far as you can tell?"

"You said I had a mild concussion?" I interrupted.

"Yes?" she answered calmly.

"But I was… unconscious." I amended myself at the last minute.

"Shock," she said, simply. "The trauma caused you to lose consciousness, as a way to escape your current situation. It's nothing abnormal. Everybody reacts to serious injury differently. The truth is you've been in and out of consciousness for two days."

I didn't remember that at all.

"Now, I understand right now that you're a little overwhelmed by all of this," she said, "But I'm going to need your personal information, alright?" She lifted up the first page of her clipboard, flicking up the pencil. "Name?"

"Eva," I answered blankly.

"Your full name, please."

"That's it," I said quietly. _"Might as well get started. Say, 'aah…'"_

"Eva?" the doctor said, loudly, trying to get my attention back, "I need you to focus right now, alright? Can you tell me where you live?"

"No," I said.

"No?" she repeated, dumbfounded. "Can you not remember?"

"I don't…" I felt my cheeks burning with humiliation. I wanted to bury my face in those clean, white sheets. "… Live… anywhere."

I saw her trying to hide it, trying to maintain her professional façade, but her eyes widened slightly with shock. "You mean you're _homeless?"_ she asked, dismayed.

I cringed. "Yes," I said.

"Ah," she said. She didn't say anything else, but the tone of it sort of sounded like she was saying, "Ah, that explains it." That explains why your clothes were so dirty. And why you're so skinny. And why you were so filthy, even without the blood. And why you ran out into the street in front of a moving car. I thought that seemed like a stupid thing to do.

And then, the question: Then what are you doing here?

And then, another: And what are we supposed to do with you?

"Tell me," she said, "Do you have any financial means?"

I shook my head. "No."

"You mean you can't pay the bill?" she said.

I felt a lump in my throat. Why, why was she rubbing it in? "No," I said.

Her expression had slowly changed. The early frankness, the out-of-place cheerfulness, was gone. She was looking at me like I was something mildly problematic, like a stray dog outside a full pound. Checking for fleas. Pity, yes, but also distaste.

"I see," she said. She folded her clipboard under her arm. "Excuse me, I need to talk with someone." She straightened up, getting ready to go.

"Are you going to kick me out?" I asked, somewhat fearfully.

She looked at me for a moment, her brow creased. "No," she said, "We won't do that. Don't worry about it. Your only concern right now should be getting better. We'll deal with that when it comes."

She turned to go.

"Wait!" I called.

She turned and looked at me, clearly impatient, clearly wanting to get outside. _"You know that girl in there? She can't pay the bill. What should we do?" _"Yes?" she asked.

"Um…" I stammered. I didn't know why I was about to say this; my mind was still full of webs; there was no real reason behind it, and yet I felt that I had to tell someone. "While I was out… I… I had this dream that I was in this place, and it was dark and there was fire everywhere…"

Even as out of it as I was, some part of me recognized how stupid I must've sounded. Or, alternately, completely crazy. The doctor barely reacted.

"Just a hallucination," she said, "Don't worry about it."

"Hallucination?" I repeated, "But, but, I was unconscious! How could I have a-?"

"Head trauma is sometimes associated with hallucinations," she said. Her tone was brusque, dismissive. "It's nothing to worry about. If you have any more then tell us. Now, if you'll excuse me…"

"Worry about?" I repeated to myself. "But I'm not worried about… Hey, listen!"

But the curtain fluttered on the rail and she was gone.

I slumped back into my pillow, still dazed. It was still running through my mind. Not just him, mind you, but the whole scene, the whole… experience, y'know? The flames, the red sky, the creatures moving against the glow. She had dismissed it with three words. Just a hallucination. A dream. Not real. You were hit by a car. Your brain slammed against the inside of your skull. Of course it's going to do funny things. It wasn't real, it wasn't real.

I guess I was a little relieved, maybe. I was out of that place. I had never been there. But I know it's going to sound weird; I mostly just felt cheated. Not just because I thought I was in danger and it turned out I wasn't, and it certainly wasn't like I had gained anything that suddenly turned out to be not-real. I'm actually having a hard explaining why I felt disappointed. It was like… It was like when you first wake up from a dream. What you just saw and felt and heard probably didn't make logical sense. But it seemed profound, important. It seemed like a window, meant only for you, a secret world, like a looking glass. It made the world seem bigger than you thought.

But this wasn't like a dream. I mean, it didn't feel like a dream. It wasn't fading, you know, it wasn't disappearing from my memory the way a dream would. It felt like… like just another memory. I could remember it coherently. In my mind I could still him, that look in his eyes as he'd stared at me. The way he had reached out to grab me. _"No!"_ The dreams I'd had after, about the same place, those were fading rapidly, running through my fingers like sand, but _that_ stayed firmly in my mind.

Not a dream. So then what? A hallucination, like she said? A vision? Or… was I really there? Was I really in that place, clutching my cap, shivering, saying _"Oh God no, oh God no"_?

Then maybe those monsters, those demons, were real. Maybe they were out there somewhere.

Or maybe I was just crazy. There was that, too.

* * *

For the next few hours, I mostly just sat there. They didn't want me to get up. I had a bedpan, which was humiliating; even more humiliating was when I apologized with downcast eyes to the nurse, and she said, "Oh don't worry. I've handled this already."

So, there was that.

I mostly remember feeling uncomfortable. But it wasn't the discomfort I was used to, the slimy skin, the hard pavement, the scratchy clothes. There was the head trauma, of course, the heavy pounding in my head, but mostly I felt exposed. I asked them to shut the blinds to make the room darker but it was still too bright, too clean, too harsh. People were constantly coming and going, checking this, checking that, asking me questions. I had worked hard for years to make myself inconspicuous, but now here I was, front and center. No hiding. No running. Nothing but eyes all around me.

And what made it all worse was that I was an intruder. I had no money. I couldn't pay the bill. They all knew that. I could see them staring at me. _Here's that homeless girl. She can't pay. _That mixed look of pity and distaste. The hollow look. At any second, I felt that they would change their minds and kick me out to the curb. I felt as though I was teetering, trapped in a fragile glass tank, the kind you would keep a lizard in.

The only time I was able to ignore their eyes was during lunch. When they announced it and set that tray in front of me, I could feel my mouth watering. Looking back, it was really nothing to impress, a loaf of moist bread in a plastic wrap, a thin, yellow soup, a Styrofoam tub of applesauce, and a bottle of water. It was on the passible side of edible. But I scarfed it all down in about a minute, barely really tasting it. I think I really scared the nurse who brought it.

"Well," she said, "At least your appetite's good."

Almost as soon as I was done wiping my mouth of the carnage, another nurse came in. "Are you Eva?" he said.

"Who wants to know?" I answered, holding back a belch.

"Um, I do," he said, making a face. "Anyway, you've got a visitor."

"What?" I asked. I was sure I'd heard him wrong.

"You. Have. A. Visitor," he said. Prick. "Should I send them in?"

"Uh," I said. My brain went blank. This was so unexpected, so utterly insane, that I had absolutely no idea how this scenario could possibly go. "I guess," was all I said.

He left. The other nurse picked up my tray and left, too.

I was floored. Who in the name of God would visit me? Who even knew about the car? It couldn't be anybody in the group. It couldn't be Chaz or the others. Could it? For a moment, I felt my heart lighten, at the idea that, yes, it was them. _"Oh, Eva, we heard what happened. Are you alright?" _But I immediately shoved it back down with a sigh. No, of course it wasn't them. Impossible. If it had been them, would I have shown up? Heck, I'd just be glad that it wasn't me.

Insanely, for a moment, my thoughts jumped to him. I shivered. No, no, no that's _crazy._ He wouldn't come all this way just for me. Would he? I held my breath. The curtain swept back.

In walked a woman I had never seen before.

I meant to let out the breath, but I think it got stuck. I just found myself staring at her. She couldn't be anybody I knew, she was just too… _happy._ She looked utterly okay with herself. She had long red hair, down to her shoulders, and she walked into the room with a kind of bouncy step. I don't mean that she was skipping or anything; she just seemed to be light on her feet. She was wearing a light brown jacket, I remember, with a green shirt, and a pair of cat eye glasses. She was carrying a plastic tub under one arm. She was smiling at me, and I could tell from the smile that she seemed nervous, but it was the kind of nervousness that was directed exclusively outward, that worried about what other people wanted, not what other people thought the kind that came with relative self-possession.

This was Betty.

"Uh, hello!" she called as she stepped in. "Mind if I come in?"

For no reason at all, she seemed to backpedal. "Er, um, well, obviously you don't mind. They already asked you that, didn't they? Eh heh…"

I didn't respond. I didn't even know what face I was supposed to make. She stepped further into the room.

"Anyway," she went on, "I came over from work as soon as I heard you were awake. I stopped by yesterday, too, but they said you weren't up yet, which really worried me, y'know? It actually kept me up all night. I kept having nightmares about it. But it turns out you're fine! You were just sleeping like a baby while I was having an episode! Boy, do I feel embarrassed! But as soon as I called in this morning to check on you and they told me you were awake, you know what I said to myself?"

"What," I said. It wasn't in response to her question. It was the only sound I could coherently make.

"I said, 'You know what this girl probably needs? A decent bite to eat.' 'Cause I was in the hospital a couple of years ago for a broken ankle, and all I could remember thinking was, 'God, I'm starving!'"

Right at that moment, I felt my stomach growl. I put a hand there and grimaced. I had just eaten like a minute ago, so why? My cheeks were burning again.

If she noticed, she didn't say anything. "So, before I rushed over here, I went home and made you some cookies. I just thought it would be weird to come over empty-handed." By this point, she was next to the bed. I sank down under the covers a little, but she wasn't looking at me. She was wrestling the lid off the tub she was carrying. About three-dozen tiny disk-shaped cookies were piled inside. "Um, some of these have peanut butter," she was saying, "I hope you're not allergic. Are you? I guess you're not."

Throughout all of this, I had barely said a word. It felt like there was nothing I could possibly say. Who was this nutty woman and what was she babbling about? Why was she even talking about peanut butter? "Okay, wait, start from the beginning," I said, squeezing my hand against my forehead. _"What_ are you doing here?"

She looked up at me. "Well, I came here to see you." She said this pretty frankly.

"And… who are you?" I asked, squinting.

She suddenly covered her mouth and laughed nervously. "Oh!" she said, "That's right! You don't know who I am, do you? Geez, I really feel stupid right now!" She reached out her hand as if expecting me to shake it. "My name's Betty," she said, "Betty O'Brian."

My eyes shifted down to her outstretched hand. I didn't take it. She awkwardly reached it out and shifted the cookie box around slightly. She coughed. "I already know your name," she said. "It's Eva, right?"

I narrowed my eyes. "What's it to you?" I asked.

"Well…" She sat down on the bed, and I froze up a little, though thankfully she sat quite a distance from me. Her eyes were cast down on the floor. "I know you don't know me, but I've been thinking about you quite a lot. I'm the one who called the ambulance after your accident."

I have no idea what emotion I felt at that moment, but I know that my face must've gone very white. I remembered the scream, that piercing scream I'd heard the moment my head slammed into the glass. _"I kept having nightmares about it." _

"Oh _no," _I said, burying my face in my hands.

Betty kept talking, still looking away. I could see her profile, her eyes underneath her glasses. "After they took you away, I went right to the hospital, to see what was going on. But they only told me to wait. Just wait and see, you know. They asked me if I knew you or anything, but of course I didn't even know your name, so they said, 'family only.' But I'm the only one who's been here, aren't I?"

I don't think she had noticed my shoulders were shaking. She suddenly turned to me, looking alarmed. "Hey!" she said, "Are you okay?"

I raised my eyes a little, so I could see her properly. I felt something darken inside me.

"Yeah," I said, "I'm fine, as you can clearly see. So you don't need to worry about me anymore. You can go home now."

She frowned. "Well," she said, "I wasn't planning on being home for a while, but if you want me to go, I'll leave."

"Just go," I muttered, "And take your cookies with you."

"Wha?" She seemed taken aback. "But they're yours! I made them for you._ I_ sure can't eat them. I'm kind of supposed to be on a diet…"

"Look you!" I suddenly shouted. "What do you think you're doing? What are you trying to pull?"

She blinked, poised on edge of the bed. "What… do you mean?" she asked.

I had no idea why I was mad at this woman. Maybe it was because she was so perky, so happy. Maybe it was because she wouldn't stop talking. Maybe I hated being pitied, and it seemed to me then that she was pitying me. But mostly, I think it was just that I didn't know how else to be. I had always reacted to anything with anger or scorn or disdain. And now that I was supposed to feel something else, I didn't know what to do. And coupled with everything that had happened to me, I just… I knew I was being childish. Even back then, I think I knew. But I was just so messed up. Like he would tell me later, my heart was poisoned.

"Just why are you doing this?" I shouted. "What exactly are you expecting to get? What do you _want _from me?"

Betty looked long and hard at me, with a look on her face that I cannot name. It looked pained, I guess, but mostly it just looked sad. "I don't want anything from you," she said. "I wasn't really expecting to _get_ anything. I just wanted to make sure you were alright. I was really worried about you!"

I felt a lump forming in my throat. I'm sure my eyes were turning glassy. How? How is it that just those words can melt away so much?

"I mean…" She kind of shrugged, grinning like she was trying to make a joke. "You were hit by a car. If anybody should be getting stuff, it's you. Hey! Wha-?"

She stopped, startled. I had begun to cry. Well, actually, that's not doing it justice. The truth was, I was bawling. Loud, ugly, horrendous sobs shook me as they poured out of my throat. It was so humiliating, it was so embarrassing, and yet at that moment, I didn't care. I just… it all had to come out, you know?

"I'm… sorry!" I cried, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry I'm so, so…"

Betty shifted a little where she sat. She was clearly uncomfortable. "Hey, uh," she was saying, "It's alright."

"No! No, it's not alright!" I sobbed, rubbing my wrists against my sopping eyes. I thought of the place with the fire and the deep, comprehending fear I had felt. I thought of the scream, Betty's scream, as my skull slammed into the windshield. I thought of all the things I'd stolen, all the things I'd laughed at, everything I felt tainting the corrupted me.

"All… All I ever do is hurt people!" I sobbed. "That's all I ever do! I… Why? Why am I like this? What's wrong with me?" The tears kept coming. My arms were soaked with them. My face was hot and sweaty, my nose was running, and out from my mouth the question kept coming. Why am I like this? Why? What did I do wrong? Where did it go wrong?

Why is everything so sad?

Through it all, Betty didn't move. I could tell she hadn't been expecting this, didn't want this to happen, but now that it was happening, she didn't move. She looked at the floor, mostly, but occasionally she glanced over gently at me, waiting it out. It was almost like… like she was a witness. Witnessing my confession, the first outpouring of my grief. Maybe it was morbid fascination or maybe she didn't want to abandon me. We never talked about it afterward, because it was the kind of thing that was both embarrassing and that we felt nothing more needed to be said about.

What I know for sure is: she didn't move.

Once my sobs calmed into sniffles and I began to feel my face cool, Betty reached over and pushed the cookie box a little closer to me, rattling it slightly. I looked up at her. She smiled.

That was all.

Meekly, I took a cookie and nibbled the edge of it. I could taste the peanut butter. It was pretty good.

"Eva?" said Betty quietly, still smiling sadly, "Can I ask you something personal?"

Crunching the cookie between my teeth, I nodded.

"Can you pay the medical bill?" she asked.

I felt another sob building in me. "No," I choked out, shaking my head. God, I felt so pathetic.

Betty nodded – I wonder now what it meant, that nod – and clapped her fist into her hand. "Okay," she said, "Then I'll pay it for you."

I was floored. It seemed like a miracle. It also seemed completely insane. "What?" I exclaimed, "No, no, you can't do that!"

"Sure I can," she said shrugging, "I've got a lot saved up, so it's fine."

The woman was going to dig into her savings to pay for me. I was horrified. "No, I can't make you do that!"

"Eva," said Betty, "I was saving that money for a rainy day. You were _hit by a car._ It doesn't _get_ much rainier than that!"

"But, but you… You barely _know_ me!" I protested, "I might be lying or…"

Her smile was completely confident. "You really think I wanted something from you? Then you can pay me back."

"How?" I asked, despairing, "I don't have anything."

She tapped her chin, thinking. Then, she snapped her fingers. "I know!" she said, "You can help me out at work! Once you're out of the hospital, of course."

I stared at her. "What, you mean, like a ward?" I asked.

She laughed. "No, no," she said, "Nothing like that! I'll explain to you."

And she explained it to me.

* * *

I was at that hospital for three weeks. And while my initial discomfort did lessen, and the staff became much more welcoming to me once they realized they were getting paid, the days were dull and long as well. They spent every day "rehabilitating me," constantly fussing over whether I could walk, whether I could read, listen, talk clearly, remember the order of colored cards they flashed at me, add. It was all very tedious stuff, and a few times I snapped at the various doctors and nurses, saying that I felt fine, that I probably could have done that stuff from day one, but they needed to make _absolutely sure,_ apparently. A few times, that one doctor asked me if I'd had any more "hallucinations." I hadn't. I didn't tell her about the dreams, which hadn't become a problem yet.

Every couple of days, Betty would appear. She always appeared at different times, in the morning, the afternoon, late at night, but whenever she came by, she always stayed for a couple of hours. She would always greet me real friendly, ask me how I'd been, what lame treatments they'd been giving me, if anything interesting had happened lately. She always gave me a reason for not appearing for the past couple of days. She was busy with work. She had to babysit her niece. She had been sick and didn't want to give me her bug. Sometimes, she brought more food. Most of it wasn't homemade, like the cookies. She brought me fried chicken from a drive-thru place or a store-bought cake. I could always see a trace of envy in her face whenever I dug in, but I could tell from the state of the food that she hadn't touched it, and whenever I offered her some, she declined.

In the days when she didn't show up, I would worry and fret. Suppose she changed her mind about paying the bill? Suppose she grew tired of me? Suppose she never came back? And then she would appear again, without fail.

In the beginning, I wondered why. At first I thought maybe she wanted to check me out, keep tabs on me, make sure I hadn't run off on her or something or that I would keep my promise to help her with her job. But, after a while, I realized she kept coming by because she just liked hanging out with me. Once she brought over a comic book for me to read, telling me solemnly that she needed it back by the end of the day. I asked if it belonged to her niece. She shook her head. It was hers. Another time, she brought in a handheld videogame console and let me play, gushing whenever I made the slightest progress. One night, she told me there was a movie coming on such and such channel, so the two of us watched it together on the little TV screen in my room. She liked showing me things, watching my reactions to them. I wondered if she had any other friends. Or, at least, any other friends who were into the same stuff she was.

We also spent long hours just talking. I didn't talk about myself much, so mostly I just listened to her. She talked about the most random stuff. Some of it was normal, like what had happened to her at her job, something her cat did, or a date she went on once that went really badly, but then she'd say something about how she wondered if circus animals actually understood what juggling was or if they were just going through the motions or why the heck did it take so long to make a good movie out of a videogame? In a way, talking to her was kind of exhausting, but I kind of liked it. She was very… sincere, I think. When she laughed, it was because of something genuinely funny. She didn't hold back, didn't mask herself. I really appreciated that.

She talked about other people a lot, too. She was always mentioning family members or girlfriends or coworkers. Sometimes when the nurse announced Betty had arrived, I found myself anticipating her bringing in one of the people she knew, smiling as she introduced them and gave them my name, but it was always just her. One day, I asked her. "Hey, how come you never bring anybody with you?"

She sort of sucked on her cheek and rubbed the back of her head, embarrassed. "Well…" she started, "I didn't want to feel like I was showing you off. Y'know, like, 'Ooh! Look at Betty! Look at the great thing she did!' That would make me a total donk."

It was hard to dislike someone who understood logic like that.

Betty was also really smart. She was constantly mentioning or bringing up ideas or concepts that I'd never heard of. I don't think she was doing it on purpose; her head was just filled with so much stuff that she lost track of what other people didn't know. I would be following her conversation okay, but then she'd say something about a ziggurat or Hammurabi's Code and I'd have to stop her and ask her to clarify. She never showed impatience when I didn't know something; she just gushingly explained it, her eyes growing huge and gooey whenever she really got into it. It was clear that she was really passionate about her work, and her excitement made me genuinely interested, too.

She worked, she explained to me, at the museum downtown. She was an archeologist, but not the kind working in the hot sun with a spade or carrying a whip. She worked in the lab, running tests and cleaning up any artifacts that were brought in, dating them and seeing what information about ancient civilizations could be gleaned from them. She told me the museum actually had tons of artifacts that they didn't display, because they didn't fit with any of the exhibits or they weren't complete or weren't interesting enough to attract visitors. But, she added, there were real gems in there, if you knew how to look. It was clear, to her, everything in there was precious.

The museum where she worked, apparently, had had more visitors in recent years because things had gotten so bad. People wanted a distraction. At the same time, the government had cut a large part of the funding, in favor of the military. The result was they had more people coming in and a reduced staff to deal with it. "That's when you come in," she said. My job, she explained would be to help around in any way I could, sort of like a volunteer. Get things set up, hand out pamphlets, give directions, anything they needed. "Think of it like an internship," she said, "Once you're more familiar with the building and if you're serious about it, then you can start getting paid."

I didn't point out the obvious, that me getting paid would defeat the stated reason for working there in the first place, to pay her back for my medical bill. A few times, I wondered if she really understood that. But, here's the thing about Betty; she didn't really care all that much about herself. I don't mean that she didn't take care of herself because obviously she did. But when she felt really strongly about something, she sort of forgot to take it for granted that that thing wasn't actually her. The way she saw it, getting extra help at the museum was a fair trade for paying a stranger's medical bill.

"But I don't have a place to stay," I said, "I doubt they'll let me sleep at the museum."

"Oh, that's easy. You can stay with me," she said, "My place is kind of small, but you can sleep on the couch until you can get back on your feet."

The thought of living with someone else terrified me, but I knew I had to do it. I don't want to give the impression that I didn't have a choice or something like that. It didn't feel like I was being presented with any kind of ultimatum. But I knew I really didn't want to stay here, and I didn't want to go back. But more than anything, I didn't want to lose Betty.

And so, when my three weeks were up, and I gathered up the small plastic bag of my belongings, I moved in to live with Betty.

* * *

**AN: **

_Chapter 2! This chapter's mostly about Betty. Oh, and Eva. Don't worry, Hunson will reappear soon._

_I feel like, "Why am I like this?" is one of the fundamental themes of Adventure Time. So is, "Look what you're turning him into." History repeats._

_For this chapter, I sort of had to invent a personality for Betty, since canonically (in the cartoon anyway) she has none. The result is what you got. I'm pretty pleased with how she turned out. _

_Reviews are encouraged! Don't be shy!_


	3. Sing

**3. Sing**

"_Come… Come to me… Come to me, child…"_

The voice was felt more than heard. It brushed like wind in my ears, on my skin. I couldn't see anything, but in the darkness I could feel something, moving around me like water.

"_I can see you… Can you… See me…?"_

I wanted to say something, wanted to reach to for a light, but my lips felt too heavy; my body wouldn't move. Slowly, I felt something soft materialize around me.

"_I'm waiting, Eva… I'm waiting…"_

It faded away, and I woke up. I found myself staring through the fuzzy and colored shapes, like murky water, that clouded my vision into the night space around me. Vaguely, I could make out the shape of Betty's furniture, the door to the stairwell outside. In the darkness, the red light from her TV cut into my eyes like a scalpel. Blearily, I rubbed them and turned over, clutching the blanket closer to myself. I stared at the cushions of the couch, dyed blue and red in the night air. I felt vaguely cheated that I had woken up.

I think that was the first dream. They were all similar, and they all kind of blur together, but I remember the feeling after I woke up from each one, that feeling of softness, of… mystery, I guess. At the time, I knew I should've been scared. And, yeah, I guess I was worried that maybe I had hit a screw loose. But I always went to bed hoping that I would dream them, that I would hear his voice again, and in the morning, while Betty was pouring me some cereal and milk as I sat there blearily, I would still hear his words going around in my head.

"_I know you can hear me… I can feel your soul…"_

The dreams started in earnest after I left the hospital and continued for weeks afterward. They didn't occur every night, but they happened often enough for me to notice. It always the same, the darkness, the feeling of something heavy and flowing moving around me, the voice. It whispered to me, beckoned to me. It felt as though I didn't have a body. There was no way to move. I was formless. But even so, I could feel my heart pounding.

I considered calling up the hospital, telling them about it. But I remembered the doctor's constant pestering after I had told her about… y'know, my little trip, and my neck burned with shame. They had let me out. They'd told me I was perfectly fine. No way did I want to stir this up again. Besides, I had a suspicion of pills.

So they continued, and I slept with his voice in my soul.

"_Eva… Eva…"_

* * *

Betty lived in an apartment on the third floor of a building with no elevator, and she had built up some pretty powerful legs from years of climbing up and down. When she brought me up for the first time after I left the hospital, she insisted on carrying my bag for me, even though there was nothing in it but my jacket. Her place really wasn't very big, but the first time I walked in there, I might as well have strolled into a palace. The floor was carpeted, I remember, and you could see the gleaming kitchen through an open doorway when you stepped through the door with the "312" stamped on it. In the corner of the parlor was a grand piano. A piano! I couldn't stop staring at it. To me, a piano was an unprecedented luxury.

Betty's place only had one bedroom, so she made up a spot for me on the couch, fetching a quilt out of a closet in the short hallway she had. In her usual fashion, she was constantly chattering, occasionally asking me questions. Was this okay? Was I hungry? If it gets too cold, feel free to throw more blankets on there. At this point, she also mentioned that there was only one bathroom, so we'd have to share it. I remember blushing, but honestly, I had always used public restrooms before then, getting in and out as fast as possible, and I came to vastly prefer the one that was used by just one other person as opposed to thousands.

The early awkwardness didn't stop there though. The first night on that couch, I couldn't sleep. It wasn't that the couch was uncomfortable – it was way softer and warmer than the bed at the hospital – it's that _I _wasn't comfortable. The air conditioner seemed incredibly loud and the darkness strangely intense. I kept tossing and turning, overwhelmingly aware that I was in someone else's home, breathing in someone else's air. I started to sweat a little.

And then my stomach began to growl.

Betty had served me dinner, but I had barely picked at it. Now, I was starving and wide-awake. And the kitchen was only a few steps away…

A few minutes later, the light flicked on in the kitchen. I froze, illuminated by the light from the open door of the fridge. Betty was standing in the doorway, looking very bedraggled and very confused. I slowly turned my head to face her. My arms were full of food from her fridge. There was a chicken leg in my mouth.

"Eva?" she asked, blinking, "What are you doing?"

I gulped down the bite of chicken in my mouth. My face was turning red.

"Um, hungry much?" she asked. She had a look on her face like she couldn't decide whether to laugh or not.

"I'm so sorry…" I muttered, hanging my head. I slowly started putting things back into the fridge, trying vainly to remember where they went.

"Hey, don't worry about it! It's okay," she said, stepping into the kitchen. Her smile was apologetic. I guess she hadn't wanted to scare me. I saw her glance down at the food I'd already decimated. There were several empty yogurt cups that I had gone through and an empty Styrofoam box that had contained a leftover burger complete with fries, which I had swallowed without even heating. Her eyes moved over the carnage, up to the bitten chicken leg in my mouth.

"But…" she continued, "I think I'll have to go by the grocery store tomorrow." She smiled at me again. "Why don't you come with me?"

I ended up going because I wanted to show I was trustworthy enough, and the idea of being alone in her apartment terrified me. So, I followed sheepishly behind while she pushed the cart through the aisles, asking my opinion on everything. Did I like spicy food? She hated it, personally. Her sister used to play a trick on her where she gave her a piece of spicy gum. She meant really spicy, as in like a pepper. Oh, she had downed so many gallons of milk because of that smart aleck. Speaking of, we should probably get milk. Did I think she should get strawberry milk? She had heard that that stuff was really bad for you. What did I think?

I think she was trying to lighten the mood, create a relaxed feeling, but I was tense and nervous nearly the entire time. In the past, whenever I'd been in a place like this, it was always to steal something, so even though my hands were empty, I still felt ready to bolt, like I was under a constant spotlight. Muscle memory, I guess. My eyes kept shifting back and forth. My shoulders were hunched up. I caught quite a few people staring at me as I hovered behind Betty. I wondered wildly what these people thought our relationship was. We didn't really look anything alike and yet we were clearly together. Insanely, for a moment I thought maybe we looked like a couple, and I kept fretting over that for a while.

All the while, as she moved from the vegetables to the cheese to the pre-packaged stuff, Betty kept telling me, "Now, if you see anything you want, just tell me, okay?"

I hadn't really seen anything that tempted me, and asking her seemed way beyond what I was capable of. But then, I noticed rows of one certain box, the same one over and over, all lined up at eye level. It was one of those boxes full of packages of pre-wrapped cakes. These were chocolate, with white frosting decorating the outside. Just looking at those boxes made my mouth water. Betty was looking in the opposite direction, toward some loaves of bread. Slowly, I crept with ridiculous care away from her, grabbed a box, and stepped gingerly back. I waited until she had turned back toward me, and I held the box in front of my face, feeling like an idiot.

"Uh… Um…" I stammered.

She looked at the box and smiled, in her typical Betty way. "Sure!" she said, "We can get those." She looked at the box again and her smile slowly melted. She bit her lip and looked around before looking back to me. "But, um, hide them when we get home," she said.

So I did.

* * *

Betty had the weekend off for some holiday or something, so we actually spent most of our time at her place, just talking. One day, she asked me if I wanted to get any more clothes, but after I declined, I guess she saw how uncomfortable it made me and she didn't ask again.

Instead, I wore her old stuff. Sweaters, jeans, pajamas that she claimed didn't fit her anymore. They were comfortable enough, and I think crisp, new fabrics would have freaked me out. I was pretty jittery in those early days.

What calmed me the most was just listening to Betty talk. I kept expecting her to ask about me, now that I was sleeping under her roof, but she never did. I guess some people would find that annoying, but I actually really liked that. I didn't like thinking about myself, much less talking about myself, so her enthusiasm to share her world with me was really very soothing.

There was always some movie or something on TV, so at night we'd watch it together on the couch where I slept, just like at the hospital. Now that I had gotten more comfortable with Betty, I started being more vocal at these viewings. "Why the heck would he say that?" I'd say, "Of course he's going to shoot him if he says _that!"_ That was the only time Betty got annoyed with me, but I could tell she was having fun all the same.

That Monday, she came into the parlor pretty early in the morning and told me that she had to go to work. I was already awake. She asked me if I wanted to come along, see if I could be an "assistant" like she was talking about. Still intimidated about being alone in her apartment, I agreed.

The museum was a building I had passed often enough walking down the sidewalk but had never entered. It was a huge monument-looking thing, complete with white columns and stone griffins. Betty didn't go in through the main entrance, because it was before opening time and the huge glass doors were locked. Instead, she led me around to a door on the side and swiped a card from a lanyard around her neck into the slot. The door clicked open and she hustled me in, shoving a little since I was hesitant.

She introduced me to the director of the place, an old guy in a suit with gray hair and a mustache. I noticed there seemed to be a little pink critter in his pocket. I was staring at it when Betty introduced me to the guy, who she called, "Mr. Chinder."

"This is Eva," she said, holding out her arms toward me like she was presenting a new car. "The one I talked to you about on the phone?"

I bit my lip and rubbed my arm a little. So, she'd talked to this guy about me, huh? What exactly had she said?

"Oh, Eva!" he said, "Of course, the volunteer! It's good to meet you." And he held out his hand.

"Uh," I said, staring at it. Slowly, I reached out and took his hand. His handshake was very vigorous, and it made my arm wobble like a noodle. "Pleasure's all mine," I said.

"So," he said, crossing his arms, "You think you have what it takes to volunteer here?"

I looked over to Betty for help. She was smiling, like this was some kind of joke. "I… I guess so," I said.

"Really?" he said, raising an eyebrow. His eyes were amused, too. "What exactly are your merits?"

"Well…" I began, rubbing the back of my head, "I can run pretty fast."

I don't know why I said that. I just sort of blurted it out. It was the only thing that even occurred to me. I waited for this guy to call me an idiot.

Instead, he was silent for a moment, before he laughed out loud and slapped his hand against my shoulder. "You'll do just fine!" he said.

* * *

Betty left, for the lab, she said, promising to meet me for lunch. Mr. Chinder led me to a back room where he handed me a stack of pamphlets of several different colors and kinds: maps, details on the new mosaic exhibit, advertisements for the water park several miles away. He showed which plastic slot by the desk each one went into and said it was my job to keep them stocked. Simple enough in theory. I put all of the pamphlets into their displays really slowly and carefully, making sure the corners were aligned, thinking I was going to be pretty bored for the rest of the day.

But what nobody had warned me about was that apparently museumgoers _really like pamphlets._ Everybody who came in grabbed a few, especially the kids, who often insisted on holding the map and dictating in tour guide voices where the group was to go next. So many hands snatched at those pieces of paper that I was constantly running out. What annoyed me the most was that most people weren't even reading them. They'd just kind of hold them and fan themselves and open them and close them and fold them in and out and make them into airplanes, and it was all very irritating. Chinder wasn't kidding when he said it would help me to be a fast runner. It seemed I was always sprinting back and forth from the printing office to the display stand, much to the bafflement of the guy running the information booth. A few times I had various tour guides, whom I found out later were also volunteers, yell at me for running in the museum, but I didn't care. I had pamphlets to restock.

I met Betty for lunch like she'd said. We ate in the museum's cafeteria, and for the first time, I found I was talking about myself, what my first morning on the job had been like, the people I'd seen, the items I'd glimpsed in the gift shop.

"Did you see that model of the Babylonian Gardens?" I asked. "That thing's huge! It must have taken them hours to build that!"

"Yeah," she laughed, "I know. You know, the weird thing is, I don't think they even sell that."

"Wha?" I'd exclaimed, "Then why are they displaying it?"

She didn't know either. We laughed.

I found I rather liked the museum, and I liked having something to do that was actually useful. I accompanied Betty on the bus to work every day, and I got pretty good at restocking pamphlets. Betty explained to me a few times that since I was a volunteer, I didn't actually have to stay all day, or even come every day, but I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather be. I took the rare idle moments I had to flip through the pamphlets I'd been stacking, and after that, I found I could follow Betty's conversations a little better. "How'd they get the mosaics upstairs?" I asked. "They held them horizontally and carried them up the steps," she said. "And the tiles didn't fall out?" I asked. "No, of course not!" she said, giggling, "Can you imagine having to pick that up, though?"

After I'd been working there for a couple of weeks, I got an assignment transfer. I knew enough about the layout of the museum from wandering around near closing time, so Chinder put me on the information booth. I have to say, I wasn't totally thrilled with the assignment when I got it, but I found that most people wanted to talk to me about as much as I wanted to talk to them. They kept their eyes down a lot of the time, mumbling very formally about what they wanted to know. Apparently, they were embarrassed about having to ask. I gave them the clearest answer I could, they said thanks, and then they left, much to both of our reliefs.

But, like the earlier pamphlet job, this one had an unexpected side. Namely, that some people ask the dumbest questions on the planet. I got plenty of the normal ones: Where is the bathroom, how long is this exhibit in town, is there a lost and found anywhere. But I remember one day a woman came up to me and asked, "Excuse me, where are the airplanes?"

I was taken aback. "Uh…" I said, "In the sky?"

The woman complained to Chinder about this, pretty angrily from what I heard of it, and he took me aside and explained to me that no matter how inane the question, I had to answer it without any sarcasm. Apparently, the woman had wanted to know where the aviation exhibit was, but this museum didn't have one. I didn't think this was entirely fair, and I told him that I wasn't trying to be sarcastic; I just didn't know what she meant. He smiled knowingly and nodded. "The next time you don't know what a visitor is talking about," he said, "Ask them to clarify. That _sometimes_ helps."

As much as I liked the museum, there were some things about it that irritated me, more so after I'd been working there for a while. For one thing, people liked to touch stuff. A lot. They were always running their hands over glass cases, over countertops, lovingly fondling the pamphlets. I also heard a couple of people talking about the museum and getting facts wrong, apparently trying to seem smart but really failing. One guy was walking by with who I guess was his girlfriend, and I overheard him say, "Did you know that Julius Caesar had an affair with Nefertiti?" I rolled my eyes and groaned.

Tours usually started at the front of the building, so I saw many hours worth of people assembling in herds as some college student gathered them together and led them away, talking loudly as they did so. Right behind the information booth was a large rock that had carvings on it in some ancient language, Greek I think. The rock wasn't behind glass or anything and just sat on this podium on the floor, protected by nothing but a red velvet rope, something else that had to be replaced regularly. This was usually where tour groups stopped first. One day while I was working the counter, some funny guy thought it would be cool or something to reach under the rope and touch the rock, putting his finger right over one of the engravings etched into it. The tour guide, who was a skinny guy with glasses, looked the same age as me, maybe a little older, but I could tell he was in way over his head.

"Um!" he called out when he spotted him, "Excuse me, please don't touch the exhibits."

"Why?" the guy said. "There's no glass. It's no big deal." He then kind of drummed his fingers over the surface and grinned to some other people next to him. I could see the others in the group looking away uncomfortably.

"Well, uh," the guide was saying, flustered, "Well, see, you could damage it. Your hands…"

"Oh, that's a load!" he said, laughing. "What exactly am I gonna do?"

"Hey!" I called over the back counter.

The whole group looked up at me, including the jerk and the tour guide. I looked right at him where he had frozen, his arm still under the rope.

"He told you not to touch it!" I said, glaring. "You need to stop."

The guy kind of moped and looked down at the floor. His arm was still under the rope. "I'm not hurting anything," he muttered.

"You really think he'd tell you it was hurting it if it wasn't?" I snapped. "Now knock it off before I call security."

The guy muttered something under his breath, but he withdrew his arm and slunk back a little. I saw the tour guide shoot me a grateful smile. I smiled sheepishly back.

That night at Betty's, I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed that Betty's old clothes looked kind of frumpy on me. I asked her if on her next day off, we could go shopping for some clothes. She was positively thrilled.

I picked something much slimmer than what I'd been wearing, something that emphasized me. When I looked in the mirror afterward, I didn't hate what I saw.

* * *

Life with Betty was calm and gentle. It seemed to be suspended in time, somewhere that didn't exist in any kind of "present," though of course, it must have.

Relatives and friends of Betty's started coming over, her sister, her niece, her coworkers. Some of them knew me already, from the museum. When someone didn't know me, Betty introduced me as "someone she met downtown," which was technically true, then mentioned that I was staying with her "until I got back on my feet." I was oddly struck by the way she used the word, "back." I had never been on my feet in my life. Everybody was very nice, and I started looking forward to nights when Betty's apartment was full. It was during this time that Betty introduced me to her friend, Chelsea, who said she knew a guy who was looking for a tenant, whenever I decided I was ready. I thanked her, a little nervously. This was how I eventually met Jeff.

Betty always cooked, when she had time, and her cooking was really wonderful. With her help, my scrawniness disappeared, and I gained a bit of weight. I filled out nicely if I do say so myself. She kept going on about her diet, but as time went on she "cheated" on it more and more often, until I began to wonder who she thought she was fooling with the charade. Regardless, she usually filled my plate twice as full as hers then sneaked bites from mine whenever she could. I didn't give her much of a chance, though. Even after I became well fed, I never did kick my habit of wolfing my food down as fast as possible. Even years later, when I ate with Marceline, my plate was still empty way before hers. "You eat like Daddy," she said to me once. I sent her to bed early that night.

Betty did a lot more than just cook. When we had to clean or vacuum the place, she showed me where the cleaning things were and how to do it, so I could help intelligently. When she had to fill out her taxes, she showed me how to do that, too, something I find out later very few children are ever actually taught. In many ways, Betty was my senior. The woman had maybe a good ten years on me, and I relied on her to teach me about the world, the way so many before had utterly failed to do. She took my hand and led me, but she never looked down on me, even though I was younger. When I didn't get something or I argued with her, she was always patient with me, but not in a patronizing "Oh, isn't that cute!" way but more like, "Don't worry. You'll get it soon." Being near her was very calming back then.

In other ways, though, she was my junior. She was giggly and loud and a little spacey sometimes. It always seemed she was much more playful than me. I guess she was childish, not in a bad way but enough to make me worry for her. There were certain things I found, surprisingly, that I could actually do better than her.

For instance, the woman had no sense of direction. She also couldn't drive. I was constantly getting calls in the middle of the night whenever I was home alone, asking me for directions. Whenever we went out together, more often than not I found that I was the one steering her around. The thing was, I knew the city really well. She could name any building, the museum, the fire department, the news station, and I probably could've walked it blindfolded. I also found I had things like bus schedules and hourly trends memorized. Take the 29 here at 6:00, the 60 is always around two minutes late, don't walk down this street at night, that sort of thing. Betty, in her moments of opacity, always somehow lost track of where she was, and that's when she would call home on her cellphone. The thing was, as hopeless as she sometimes seemed, Betty never once got mugged or even pickpocketed. She could always find a crowded street or a well-lit building to call from and it wasn't uncommon for her to mention that there was a police car nearby. She could find safe places very easily. It was street signs she couldn't find.

She was also much more athletic than you would think. She wasn't a big team sport player or anything like that, but she was pretty graceful, and she didn't tire easily. She liked to go roller-skating or toss a Frisbee with her friends while I watched. Sometimes we'd go running in the park together, and we found that we could easily keep up with each other. She had a lot of energy. Life had been good to her.

That piano in the living room wasn't just for show. Betty loved to play the piano, and she was really good at it. She also loved to sing. That she wasn't so good at. Actually, she seemed to be almost completely tone deaf. But she'd belt out the words to a song at the top of her voice, squeaking like a rusty door, while her fingers deftly and flawlessly floated out the melody. She showed me the lyric sheets and invited me to sing along with her, and I did, nervously at first, but with more feeling as we grew closer. She claimed I was better than her. I didn't think this was saying much and told her so, and, of course, she laughed. I think I remember those moments the most, her playing the piano, both our voices rippling, sounding no doubt like a pair of alley cats but not caring in the slightest, because the music was all around us and there was nothing else.

Looking back, when I think about what happened later, those days I spent with Betty seem like an impossible golden time, a dream where the war and the crime and the pain couldn't touch us, though, of course, it always could. It was a time when we were safe, and the outside world didn't exist, and a place where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. And I was happy. It felt like the happiness would never end.

But, of course, it ended. Like everything else. We ended it all.

* * *

"Betty? Can… Can I talk to you about something?"

Betty stopped where she was and looked over at me, curiously. Something in my tone must have thrown her off. We were both in our pajamas, and she was on her way to bed. We had even already said goodnight. And then, out of the blue, my fingers twiddling, I'd blurted it out.

"Um, sure Eva," said Betty, turning to face me. "What about?"

Awkwardly, I walked over to the couch. "Uh… can you sit down?" I said, gesturing at the cushion next to me. "It's kind of important."

Betty looked a little alarmed. I honestly didn't blame her. I never asked her what she thought I was about to tell her. But, she sat down, her knees turned to face me.

"What is it?" she asked me. I fidgeted a little, still clutching my hands together. I wasn't sure where to begin without sounding totally nuts. It didn't seem possible.

I wasn't sure why I was doing this. I didn't really think I was in any danger, but… maybe that's not right. It was his voice. I didn't know what else to do. My trip had been a secret, something that was mine alone. The dismissal of the doctor had made it so. Only mine. Something to carry with me to the grave. But now it felt as though it would make me burst. I didn't know what else to do.

But if there was anyone on this planet I trusted, it was Betty.

"Listen…" I said, haltingly. The words weren't coming easily. It felt like they were stuck in my mouth. "This is… this is gonna sound crazy…"

"Take your time," said Betty. "It's okay."

I took a deep breath and blew it out, the way I imagined a runner would do right before taking off. Here it goes. "The thing is… lately, I've been having these weird dreams. And, um, it's the same dream, over and over."

"Okay…" said Betty, clearly not getting where this was going.

"In the dreams, I hear this voice. And there's nothing else. I can't see anything. There's only the voice. And it talks to me every night. Well, not _every _night." I tried to smile, weakly. Betty wasn't smiling. "But, every time I have that dream, it's always the same voice."

I was having difficulty reading Betty's expression. "What does it say?" she asked.

"Well…" I began shakily. I couldn't believe I was actually pouring all this out to her. It had seemed too sacred before. "It calls me. It beckons to me. It tells me to… to come with it."

There was no mistake. Betty looked properly alarmed now. "Does it tell you to do anything else?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No, not really. It's mostly vague stuff. Like, 'I see you.' 'Come to me.' Stuff like that. Nothing demanding."

Betty seemed to relax slightly. Slightly. "How long has this been going on?" she asked.

"Since… Since I moved here."

"What!?"

"No, that's…" I groaned, pressing the balls of my hands into my forehead. "That's not true. It was really at… at the hospital."

"The hospital?" Betty repeated.

"Yeah," I said. "But it was different, then. Well, not really. Actually, I…" Random syllables were just tumbling out of my mouth now, as I tried to sort the chaos that was pouring out. Everything in my head, which made sense there, was getting jumbled.

"Alright, okay," said Betty, holding out a hand. "Slow down. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything."

I grimaced as though I was in pain and shook my head. "You're going to think I'm crazy," I told her.

"It doesn't matter what I think," she said sternly. "This is important."

I took another deep breath, this one shakier. I pushed aside the thought of the doctor and just tried to concentrate on the words.

"After… the accident," I began, "Right after I got knocked out, I had this dream. Well, they said it was a dream. The people at the hospital, I mean. But, it didn't feel like a dream. It felt so real, as real as me talking to you right now. And, in this dream, I was in this place where there was fire everywhere. And it was hot and dark. And, there was this man, except he wasn't really a man, not really. And he… wanted something from me. I'm not sure what."

Betty was staring at me. "And this happened while you were in the hospital?"

I looked down. "I guess so. I mean, I was unconscious, so I don't really know when it was. All I know is that I got hit by a car, and suddenly I was there. It scared me to death!"

"Okay," said Betty. I took that as permission to go on.

"Right. So, when he was coming at me, I… I tried to fight him off."

"The man?"

"Yeah…"

"That seems really brave."

I laughed a little harshly. "It didn't feel brave. It mostly felt… Well… I'm not sure exactly. Mostly, I just felt angry."

"Then what happened? Did he hurt you?"

I shook my head. "No, he didn't get the chance. He beat me, and he was going to do – I don't know, something – but then I disappeared. I just kind of faded away, and I don't remember anything after that. But Betty, he was furious. He tried to reach out and grab me. And… And… And I know it's him. It's his voice that I'm hearing in my dreams. It's the same man or whatever he is. Betty, I think he wants me back!"

Betty's eyes widened, and she grabbed me by the shoulder. "You're not thinking of going back are you?"

I jumped, a little thrown off by her urgency. "No!" I said, and there was no uncertainty in my voice. Honestly, I hadn't even considered it. Why would I?

Betty seemed to relax, but her hand stayed on my shoulder. "Have you seen him again, since…?"

"No," I said. "Just heard him. And even then, it's just in dreams. It's never as clear as it was that first time."

Betty looked away, working her lip. I could tell she was thinking hard. "Hmm, you could just be dreaming about the experience," she said. She kind of made a noise in her throat. "So I guess this happened at the hospital. Or in the ambulance. I wonder if this was before or after they used the defibrillator."

It felt as though a thunderclap had banged inside my skull. "Defibrillator?" I repeated.

Betty looked at me, startled. "Er, yeah. When they brought you in, your pulse was irregular, so they had to give you a shock. I saw it on the hospital bill. They didn't… They didn't tell you?"

I put my hand on my chest, over the heart that had almost stopped. "No," I said, "They didn't. So I really was dying…"

We sat there for a moment in silence, the soft pulse beating warmly against my fingers.

It had almost stopped.

And if it had…

"_Come to me…"_

Oh, God.

Betty was making a weird face. She sort of tapped her fingers and cleared her throat and then said, "Well, don't worry." She stood up and tried to smile at me. "I'll call the doctor. He'll know what to do. Don't worry, Eva, we're going to make it stop.

"No!" I cried, stretching out a hand. "Betty, you don't understand!" She sat down. I braced myself and said: "I don't want them to stop."

A crease formed on her brow. "Wh-what do you mean? Why not?"

"It's just… I don't feel…" The words were scrambling in my head again. I tried to straighten them out. "They aren't bad dreams, really. I… I kind of like them."

"Eh?"

"I do," I insisted, and I knew it was true. "I like hearing his voice. Because it reminds me, you know? Of when I was there."

"But… I thought you said you were scared."

"I was!" I said. I ran my fingers through my hair, frustrated. "But I… it just… it felt… special. No, that's not it. It felt deep. It felt important that I saw that. And no one else has. No one else knows. It's like it was just for me." I shook my head. I wasn't getting the feeling exactly right. It was much more vague than how I made it sound. But it was the best I could do. "But the people at the hospital, they treated it like a _symptom._ A hallucination is what they called it. And to be scared out of your wits like that and then have someone just brush it off… So when I hear his voice, it's like a reminder. It's like… proof."

I looked up at her. Never before then did I feel the years between us more clearly. Or since. "It's important," I said.

Betty kind of looked down. Then she looked over to the side, staring at the blank TV. "That's, um… a little weird, Eva."

I buried my face in my hands. "I know it's weird!" I cried. "It's messed up is what it is! But I… I can't help it. I can't help thinking like that."

I raised my head from my hands. My hair was pretty mussed at this point, hanging around my face like a haystack. "Betty?" I said meekly. A desperate plea. "Am I crazy?"

She didn't answer right away. She seemed to be mulling it over. "Well…" she began slowly, "You don't _act _crazy. And if you're not scared, then I guess there's nothing to worry about."

"But I _am_ scared!" I protested.

"Why?" she said. "'Cause you're worried that you're crazy?"

I nodded.

"Okay…" she said, tapping her chin. "Well, let's look at this. This voice, do you ever hear it when you're awake?"

"No," I said. I had already thought about this many times. "It's only when I sleep."

"And it never gives you commands?" she continued.

"No. Not really."

"And, have you done anything bad?"

"Ha!" The sound escaped before I could stop it. I couldn't help it. It was funny.

Betty wasn't deterred. "I mean, since the dreams started."

The smile dropped from my face. "No…" I said, realizing how strange that felt.

Betty shrugged. "Then you're not crazy," she said.

My pulse quieted. It felt as though a cool breeze was flowing over me. I managed a weak smile. "Yeah," I said, "I guess so."

"Right?"

"Right.

She seemed to relax, too.

"Listen," she said, putting her hand over mine. Her hand, I remember, was warm and dry. It reminded me of red leaves. "Thanks for telling me this. I know it must have been hard."

"Yeah," I said quietly, looking down at the carpet. "Yeah…"

"I'm sure it'll be fine." What did she mean by "it" exactly? "Still, if it gets any worse, you need to tell me okay?"

Gets any worse. So, even still. "Sure," I said.

The couch lightened as she lifted herself up. I waited for her footsteps to disappear down the hall, but there was only silence. Then she said: "Hey."

I looked up. She was smiling. "You know you can trust me, right Eva?"

"Yeah," I said, without even thinking. "'Course."

"So don't be afraid to tell me anything," she said, "Because no matter what, I'm here. Okay?"

I smiled sheepishly. "Okay," I said.

* * *

**AN: **

_I'm back! Sorry for the delay. Something came up. You know how it is._

_"Betty" is less than two weeks away, so in less than two weeks, a lot of what I've written about Betty might get jossed. (Ha ha! Ooh...) I don't mind, though. I sort of knew going into this story that it wasn't going to be exactly like the show. Still, there's not much time to get out my idea of Betty before the real one shows up, so I better crank out these chapters ASAP. Still, if my characterization of Betty ends of contrasting with what's in the show, well, I'll still stick to the plan with my Betty. Might as well, right?_

_One of the songs Eva and Betty sang together was, "Three Cheers for Five Years," by Mayday Parade. I feel like it captures the feeling of not only this story but the more somber parts of the show as well. Check it out, if you want. You can find it pretty easily on Youtube._

_Things will get more exciting next chapter. Stay tuned. And please review!_


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